Alain Ingrassia

Biography

It was during a "Danses autour du Monde" traditional dance workshop in the 70s that I met Lou and Claude Flagel. These courses, which I followed for several years in a row, taught me to understand traditional dances, and later, ancient dances, within an ethnographic and historical framework specific to each dance form. Drawing on their teachings, I never lost sight of their approach to a danced corpus in my research into medieval dance.

For Lou and Claude Flagel, the 60's, 70's and early 80's were years of intense teaching activity within popular education movements. In Belgium, alongside Marcel Hicter, and in France, with the Ligue de l'enseignement and the Fédération des oeuvres laïques, Claude and Lou Flagel supervised dance teacher training courses. They used records as a musical medium, and in the 70s created their own "Danses autour du monde" collection, and the Fonti Musicali label. Each of the 21 releases in the series comes in the form of a small boxed set containing two 45 rpm records, a booklet explaining the dances, scores and, in some cases, kinetographic sketches using the Laban system, created by Jean-Philippe Van Aelbrouck. The musical quality of these productions is remarkable, especially when compared with other recordings intended for young people at the time. The courses themselves, lasting around a week, are great moments. Each apprenticeship is approached within a detailed ethnographic framework. Claude, a fine dancer, is also an astonishing multi-instrumentalist, a great collector of instruments, and a captivating lecturer. Lou is a wonderful dancer. The meetings end with a debriefing session where everyone is democratically invited to express their feelings and suggestions for improvements in teaching or organization. But the couple's interest is not limited to traditional dances. Historical dance also needs the right musical support, with the right tempos and a precise number of repeats. In 1977, a selection borrowed from Thoinot Arbeau's "Orchésographie" (1588) was released on 33 rpm by Chant du monde, with a well-documented booklet featuring facsimiles of the original edition. The following year, a disc devoted to the contredanses notated by John Playford in 1651, entitled "The English dancing master", was released by the same publisher. From 1988 onwards, Fonti Musicali published a series of CDs featuring repertoire from the Italian Renaissance, in collaboration with Andrea Francalanci ("Balli e baleti da ballare"), the French Revolution ("Le bal des citoyens") and the Belle Epoque ("Le bal du kiosque à musique" and "Carnet de bal").

In the field of pedagogy, Claude and Lou Flagel were also, in the late 1970s, the main architects of renowned summer courses that left their mark on an entire revivalist generation. Instrumental, vocal and dance workshop leaders included the best specialists of the day, such as John Wright, Catherine Perrier, Rémi Dubois and many others; crossovers and exchanges were the rule, and occasional prestigious guests, such as Ferenc Novák or John Kirkpatrik and his Morris Men group. Mini-conferences, concerts and dances alternate with moments of practice, in a highly stimulating context of global cultural approach, far from being reduced to techniques and bodies of melodies.

Based on : Françoise Etay , Vielleux, mais pas seulement... Hommage à

Claude Flagel (1932-2020)